Man calls police after being booted from Nickelsville

A scene from Nickelsville last month when the pink tents were near the Duwamish River. (Scott Eklund/P-I)

A man who had been staying at Nickelsville – the pink-tent homeless camp at Discovery Park – called police complaining he had been booted from the camp for drinking beer.

The man told officers that the homeless camp’s “security team” hogtied him – a claim rebuted by the four other men involved.

The incident started about Friday when Nickelsville members voted – 10 days after the camp had been formed – to ban all drugs and alcohol, according to a police report released Wednesday.

The four members of the security team told police the man who complained of being hogtied was one of five people known to have alcohol. When they called him out, the man said he had a handgun and would kill whoever came into his tent.

The four men went after him. The guy started swinging a hammer. The group told police they planned to tie his hands behind the man’s back, but escorted him out instead after wrestling him to the ground and disarming him.

That man, who called police, told the responding officer he had been one of the coordinators of Nickelsville, but quit his position on Friday because “residents are smoking crack cocaine and marijuana,” according to the report.

“I’ve heard about the dealing that’s going on,” he told the officer. “I’m on Nickels’ side now; I know what he’s up against.”

When the officer arrived at Nickelsville, where he interviewed members of the security team, he could “smell the odor of marijuana in the air,” he wrote in his report.

No arrests were made, and the man who had been escorted out of Nickelsville was taken to a homeless shelter.

Campers at Nickelsville have their pink tents on land leased to the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation. City officials have said if people are not out by the end of this week, they’ll be fined.